McMorris Rodgers Urges Senate to Act Before House on Cuts

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris
Rodgers, a House Republican leader, said her party will wait for
the Senate to act before proposing alternatives to the automatic
spending cuts now taking effect.

Republicans will wait for President Barack Obama and Senate
Democrats to offer legislation to replace the cuts known as
sequestration with other reductions in government spending, said
McMorris Rodgers. As party conference chairwoman, the
congresswoman from Washington state ranks fourth among
Republicans in the House.

“The president continues to say we need to raise taxes,”
McMorris Rodgers, 43, said in an interview on Bloomberg
Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this
weekend. “We need the Democrats to recognize that we have a
spending problem. We need them to look at the other side of the
equation and not just keep talking about raising taxes.”

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, voiced a
similar complaint in an interview scheduled to air on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” tomorrow.

“There’s no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House
to replace the sequester,” Boehner said yesterday after he and
top congressional leaders met with Obama at the presidential
mansion, according to an excerpt released by the network.

Obama Proposal

McMorris Rodgers didn’t acknowledge Obama’s proposal to cut
almost $1 trillion from the budget, including reductions in
entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Republicans have yet to offer any specific cuts to
entitlement programs as an alternative to sequestration, even as
Boehner called such spending “the primary drivers of our
debt.”

The alternative cuts passed by House Republicans last year
didn’t tackle Medicare or Social Security. That bill, which
expired when the last session of Congress adjourned in January,
protected defense spending by cutting food stamps and other
domestic programs.

McMorris Rodgers said sequestration was about making
immediate cuts to start reducing the deficit.

“Part of the deal was that we were going to cut $85
billion out of the federal government,” she said. “We never
seem to get to the place where we actually want to move forward
on the cuts. When we agree to raise taxes or raise revenue, that
takes effect immediately. But in the history of this country,
the cuts never seem to happen.”

‘Smarter’ Cuts

Across-the-board reductions could still be avoided,
McMorris Rodgers said.

“I do not like these cuts,” she said. “There are smarter
ways to reduce spending in the federal government, smarter ways
to come up with the reforms.” She didn’t offer any specifics.

In the current Congress, House Republicans haven’t proposed
any alternatives, and their counterparts in the Senate on Feb.
28 blocked the Democratic majority from passing a budget
proposal that included higher taxes on the rich.

“Why should the House have to pass a third plan before the
Senate puts any kind of a proposal on the table?” McMorris
Rodgers said. “It’s pretty basic to the legislative process
that the House passes a proposal and the Senate passes a
proposal.”

Obama said after yesterday’s meeting that Republicans, not
Democrats, have blocked action to end sequestration.

“It’s happening because a choice that Republicans in
Congress have made,” he told reporters. “They’ve allowed these
cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single
wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.”